3.1: Abstract

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… the course was conceived on the basis of two ideas—“Classroom without Walls” and “Global Village”. – Charles Quist-Adade (2008)

This chapter presents preliminary overview and findings of a pilot course webconferencing course on Globalization involving largely students and instructors in Canada and Ghana. The overview will focus more on the planning and implementation stages of the course than on the delivery and content. It will highlight the challenges confronted, lessons learned, and lessons unlearned throughout the more than two years planning and implementation of the project, whose principal objective was to create geographically distributed collaborative learning and teaching between students and faculty in developed and developing countries.

The undergraduate and graduate course on Globalization (Sociology of Global Inequalities), which was implemented in the Spring of 2008 (from January 7 to April 21), was conceived on the basis of two ideas— “Classroom without Walls” and “Global Village”. It was designed, using a unique interactive multimedia approach to link students and faculty in two international locations—Ghana and Canada. The course, through the integrative information and educational technologies, aimed to break the boundaries of time, space, and distance thereby facilitating the sharing of knowledge between the students at the three sites. What is more, it sought to create a “networked collaborative learning environment” for students and instructors at the University of Ghana and Kwantlen University College in British Columbia, Canada.

The partially online course used a mixed mode delivery approach, combining synchronous video-audio streaming (videoconferencing), real chat, online materials, pre-packaged online materials, as well as asynchronous chat sessions. The course had a classroom component at each of the host sites that was supported by a course website. Interaction between learner and lecturer was primarily through text messaging and online chats during synchronous lecture sessions. Students also had to use online chat sessions and discussion forums with teaching assistants.

The course had a mix of synchronous and asynchronous activities (i.e., some activities took place at the same time, same place; some at the same time, different place; and some at a different time, different place). The course provided continuous feedback, high levels of interaction and an emphasis on student work and group projects.

In all 31 undergraduate students from Kwantlen University College (KUC) and six graduate students from the University of Ghana, Legon (UGL) took the course. The preliminary study showed that while the preparatory stage was quite daunting and the project leader had some harrowing experiences in finding collaborators, accessing funding, the overall benefits of the project to both students and instructors were quite substantial, making the efforts and sacrifices worthwhile.